The main principle here is: homework is your child’s responsibility. You shouldn’t be correcting it, or hovering. It’s a way for the teachers to assess where your child is in learning the curriculum. It’s not a test of your own second-grade math skills. (Of course, you can be a resource if your child asks for some minimal guidance, or a check that he’s on the right track.) That holds for the amount of homework assigned. If your child consistently can’t finish the homework in a reasonable period of time, let the teachers know. Don’t be a collaborator in the overwork culture rampant in our society.
This may seem like a radical position. But if you take charge of your child’s homework in first grade, or third grade, or sixth grade, or tenth grade, when does it end? When does your child take over responsibility? The stakes may seem high, but they are lower when your children are still very young than at any time in the future. If you’re in charge of homework through high school graduation, how will your child fare in college?
Hand over the reins now. Support your child in planning homework and setting up systems to keep track, and then let go. The sooner you make that transition, the better.
A friend of mine recently asked for advice because her kids felt so negative about homework. They did the minimal amount required, in a scrawl, and didn’t seem to care that the teacher was disappointed or that their grades would suffer. “How do I fix their attitude?” she asked. I suggested that she use the tools in Chapters 6, 7, and 8 for connection and building capability: sharing the family values with respect to education, commenting on the kids’ progress, and noting their interest in “nonschool” learning.
That being said, it’s actually developmentally appropriate when children don’t care about homework. Much homework is boring and useless. Many teachers don’t really care either. Don’t undermine your kids’ accurate assessment by insisting that they should feel differently. They don’t have to love it in order to accept the responsibility.
I came to this realization when Maddie was in third grade. As you know, I was a good girl, a typical A student who relished filling out worksheets with beautiful, round letters and neat columns of numbers. I took joy in dotting i’s and crossing t’s.
My children are just not wired this way.
Maddie’s third-grade teacher convinced us that she was unmotivated and lazy, that she put in the minimal effort and achieved merely average academic results when her standardized test scores suggested that she was capable of much more. For months we emailed back and forth, puzzled over why Maddie was consistently falling short. She got in trouble for chatting in class, for reading a novel under her desk when she was supposed to be doing worksheets, for passing notes, for playing tricks on her best friend. I couldn’t square these reports with the eagerly helpful and competent child we saw at home. So finally, at the suggestion of my sister-in-law, who was an elementary school teacher, Brian and I asked to observe the class.
What we saw shocked me. Unlike the classroom I remembered from third grade, children didn’t sit in their desks for longer than thirty minutes. Nor did the teacher instruct the whole class at once: they were broken up into groups of about six students. During a two-hour “integrated learning block,” each group switched activities every twenty or thirty minutes: they’d go from sitting around the teacher’s desk for a small group lesson to sitting on the carpet to work with a partner on a learning game, to sitting at their own desks for independent work.
Aside from the one block of time when Maddie’s group was working directly with the teacher, she was expected to maintain focus on an activity that the teacher didn’t assess or evaluate. Many of the worksheets weren’t turned in, and even if they were graded, it was simply with a check. No wonder Maddie found school boring and useless! No wonder her willpower to behave eroded when she saw the opportunity to chat with a friend or pull off a practical joke.
This experience was the turning point in my understanding of modern-day education—and my own children. I probably would’ve been fine in that classroom, because of the intrinsic joy I found in filling out worksheets. But for Maddie and Ava, three-quarters of their learning time felt like a waste.
After much debate and observation of other schools and classrooms, we eventually moved both kids to a private school with smaller class sizes and limited busy work. I know it is a privilege to be able to afford alternative education, but even for the three years that my kids remained in the public schools after my classroom visit, my mind-set had shifted. No longer did I think there was something wrong with them that had to be fixed immediately. When their academic results were mediocre, I saw that as a reflection of a bad fit between their temperament and the classroom environment. We all could take some steps to make it work and improve their ability to stay on task, but some pressure points would remain. I accepted that, and I stopped sending my kids the message—spoken or not—that there was something wrong with them.
Now that Maddie is in seventh grade, she finally cares about homework and how she does in school. Most days she arrives home already having finished some of her assignments during free periods, and after playing with the dog and roughhousing with her sister, she generally settles down to work.
Occasionally she moans or resists the after-school routine, but generally the trend is in the right direction. And when she struggles, the reason often turns out to be a learning problem—some math concept she didn’t understand, or a project that was overwhelmingly big and required some support in breaking it down into steps. Our children will get there when they’re ready, with our support, and we must be patient. Pushing them doesn’t help—it merely cements their self-image as a bad or reluctant student.
In my experience, parents complain about homework battles with kids, but not quite as much as they do about screen time and sibling fights. I’ll tackle those two topics next.
ALEJANDRO SAT GLUED TO THE screen of his iPad, manipulating the controls on a video game based on the animated film Cars. The beep of a timer sounded across the open-plan kitchen.
“Okay, my love, that was fifteen minutes,” his mother, Camila, said, in Spanish, reminding him of their agreed-upon after-school screen time limit.
“No, no, it wasn’t,” responded Alejandro, a slight figure in baggy pants and an oversized yellow shirt from the Washington, DC, public school he attends. “I want to…”
“You want to. Do you want to help me? I’m going to start cleaning the veggies and making dinner.”
“Yeah!” he replied, making no move to put away the iPad.
“Okay, Alejandro, I’m putting that away now,” Camila said. She walked over to the table and reached a hand toward the device.
“No! I’ve almost finished this round.”
“You have one minute, and then we need to put it away over there.”
“What’s that? Oh, now I know what happened. Everybody won. Mater is making a happy face,” Alejandro said. “When I win, he’s happy.”
“Okay, enough,” she said.
On a giant piece of slate that covered the kitchen wall, the family wrote shopping lists, problems to discuss, and ideas for family fun in chalk. Nearby, a laminated card for each child displayed crayoned images of every step in the morning routine (eat breakfast, brush teeth, backpack, shoes) and the after-school routine (homework, jobs, and free time). Before he sat down with his iPad, Alejandro had created his plan for the afternoon: doing his homework, cleaning the kitchen table of crumbs, and then, and only then, fifteen minutes of iPad time.
“Okay. Do you want to help me with dinner?” Camila asked.
“Yes.”
“Let’s go then. Let’s see…” she turned to the kitchen. She looked at the food she’d set out on the counter earlier.
Finally, Alejandro turned off the iPad, his mind on food. “Hot dogs?” he asked in English, standing up to put away the device. He trotted to the sink to see what his mom was doing. Camila’s calm insistence on the rules had paid off. She had resisted getting into a power strugg
le, while not backing down from the limit.
“No, no es hot dogs,” Camila responded with a smile, in Spanish. “Do you want to use the knife and help chop? Sound good?”
“But I don’t want to wash my hands,” he said in Spanish.
“Did you wash them before when we were making snack?”
“Yes.”
“You washed them? That’s fine. They’re clean.”
Alejandro brought a bowl to the kitchen counter and pulled over a stool. Together, the pair began washing tomatoes for the evening’s salad. Brussels sprouts, zucchini, and squash waited their turn.
I’M GOING TO TELL YOU the best, guaranteed cure for sibling conflicts: have an only child.
If you’ve already given your child a sibling, it’s too late. They will need to work out their own relationship. That’s necessarily going to include verbal sparring and probably some physical tussles as well. This isn’t a bad thing. Just as bear cubs and puppy dogs learn about limits and socialization through rough play, young children need this trial and error to figure out human relationships.
As you implement connection tools like special time, verbal encouragement, and regular appreciations, you will build a culture of warmth and bonding in your family. When you resist labeling your children, they’ll feel less need to square off in opposite corners against one another. Gradually, sibling fights will lessen.
That said, you certainly can take additional steps to channel their energies in productive directions.
Most important, stay out of it as much as possible. Don’t take sides. Don’t get drawn into refereeing sibling disputes. As long as all your kids are older than toddlers and can defend themselves, you’re needed only if there’s blood or a broken bone. So often, they’re fighting to get your attention. And if not, they may just be wrangling for fun.
I realized this one time when my children entered the kitchen, where I was cooking dinner, lunging at each other with light sabers and karate kicks. My temper rose. I really didn’t need this on a busy weeknight. But just as I started to say something, one of them giggled. Realizing that their sparring was entertainment, I shooed them into another room and continued my dinner prep.
Focus on what you can do, like leaving the room or even popping in ear buds to listen to some calming music. If you do feel you need to intervene, put the children in the same boat—don’t take one child’s side. Trying to judge the situation will just encourage more rivalry.
Say things to your kids that give them information and may help them problem-solve, like: “I see two kids and one toy. That’s a tough problem.” If they continue fighting over the toy, you could always put it away, with a comment: “I see the toy is causing a problem, so I’ll put it away for now. When you two have an agreement on playing with it together, I’ll be happy to bring it back out again.”
PEP founder Linda Jessup had a rule that any sibling fighting had to happen outside, no matter the weather. Children had a choice whether to fight outside or resolve disputes peacefully indoors. For a while, we followed this policy and nudged the children onto the lawn to work out their problems.
And of course, whenever you see them playing together cooperatively or appreciating each other, anchor that trait. Don’t just smile to yourself and sneak out of the room to avoid disrupting the magic. Encourage the behavior and name it. That’s how you will start to shift their own view of their relationship.
MY WHITE HAVANESE DARTED FORWARD, intent on a robin I hadn’t even spotted at the side of our lawn. The bird took off toward a tree branch. I ran along with the dog, urging him across the grass. As my socks began to feel damp, I realized that the lawn was still soaked from a shower earlier.
“Let’s go inside,” I said. “I’ll get you some food.”
Buddy Bear scampered up the front steps. I stepped inside the house and looked at my watch. 7:43 a.m. The house was silent. I hung up the dog’s leash and walked into the kitchen-den area of the house.
“Hi, Mom,” said Ava, my ten-year-old. I was surprised to see her out of bed, where she’d been when I left to walk the dog. Ava’s usually slow to rise. But she was already wearing shorts and a sweatshirt, not a bathrobe. Her long hair swung free of its typical ponytail.
My thirteen-year-old, Maddie, formed a lump in a chair by the window of the den. She smiled at something on her phone.
“There’s no screens in the morning,” I chided. I walked over to the trash can and tossed out the poop bag. I steeled myself.
“I guess we aren’t going for bagels,” I said, trying to keep my voice even. Before I left to walk the dog, I’d kissed each child awake with a reminder that in order to stop by our favorite bagel store, they’d need to be ready by 7:40 a.m., when I returned.
“I’m almost ready,” Maddie yelped. She turned off her iPhone and stood up, stretching.
“I wish we could,” I responded, keeping my voice level. I poured some leftover coffee into a mug and popped it into the microwave. Ava scooted around me to retrieve her croissant from the toaster oven.
“What the fuck!” Maddie shouted. I looked over and saw her face turning red, beneath hair still tousled from sleep. She clenched her fists. “Fucking Ava! Fucking…”
“We’re definitely not going if there’s cursing or violence,” I said, invoking a basic agreement of our house. “I’m sorry you’re disappointed, honey. Why don’t you grab a croissant for the car?” Firm and kind, I thought to myself, just keep moving through the morning routine.
“A croissant isn’t going to fill me up! I need a bagel. I’m going to sit in the stupid rehearsal for the musical all morning. I don’t even have anything to do.”
“I thought you were playing the bass.”
“I only play on four songs and there’s thirty-six other ones,” she yelled, still standing in the middle of the den, legs planted and fists balled. “I can’t even play the four songs. It’s so boring. I’m not going to school. I’m just going to stay right here.”
Don’t pick up the rope, I told myself. You’ll just deepen her dysregulation if you argue. I murmured something sympathetic and headed back to the front hall. Ava trotted after me, tucking her school iPad into her backpack. “Can you carry my sleeping bag to the car?” she asked. After school, she would be heading to a friend’s sleepover birthday party.
“Why don’t you make two trips to the car?” I suggested.
Maddie stormed past us in a cloud of curse words. She stomped up the stairs and opened her bedroom door with a fury. “It’s all Ava’s fault,” she yelled.
“Please don’t slam that door,” I said, going back to the kitchen to retrieve my coffee from the microwave. I added stevia and milk and washed an apple for breakfast.
Slam. Slam. Crash. Thud.
Maddie thumped back downstairs and into the den. She snatched her phone from the chair. “Fucking phone! It’s all your fault!” She stormed to the back of the house, where the kids’ Legos littered our sunroom floor. “I’m throwing you away.”
I tried to ignore the crashing and banging. I poured food into the dog’s bowl. Ava quickly finished her croissant.
Maddie slumped back. Tears streamed down her face. She threw herself onto the couch, sobbing. “I’m so tired. I didn’t get any sleep last night because Daddy was coughing.”
“Oh, that’s awful,” I said.
I paused.
Should I give her a hug? Will she just push me away? At thirteen, her body had suddenly developed a new kind of density. She was as lean as ever, but somehow more solid. No longer a little kid.
“And now I’ve ruined everyone’s morning!” she wailed.
I took six paces to the couch and perched beside her. I wrapped an arm around her shoulder and kissed her wet cheek. She turned her face to snuggle into my neck. I gave her a full hug. “You haven’t ruined anyone’s morning,” I said. “It’s only 7:57 a.m. There’s hours left in my morning.”
More sobs. I squeezed one last time and rose. “I know you’re upset. I hop
e you decide to join us.”
As I crossed the room, she croaked, “I’m coming. Please don’t leave without me.”
It was April. Since October we’d been working on the morning routine. It was the first year we drove both kids to middle school. I longed for the easy fallback that if they dawdled and missed the ride to school, they could walk themselves to the local elementary school. We finally settled on the agreement that the car would leave for school at 8:00 a.m., regardless of who was inside. Several times during this year, Ava had missed her ride and waited impatiently at home for a few hours until one of the adults—me or my parents—could drive her to school. Maddie had never missed the ride.
In the front hall, Ava slipped on her backpack. “I’ll take your sleeping bag,” I said.
By the time I came back inside for my coffee and gym bag, Maddie was buttering a croissant at the counter. I stood beside her.
“I’m sorry, Mom.”
I put an arm around her shoulder and squeezed. “I accept your apology,” I said. “I’m sorry that I wasn’t back from the walk earlier.”
I picked up my belongings and walked to the car. Later in the day, we would discuss the cursing, and Maddie would tidy up the table and stools she knocked over. She’d lose fifteen minutes of screen time, our agreed-upon consequence for using the phone before responsibilities.
We were back on track.
Part 3
Making It Stick
10
Modeling
IT’S NO SECRET THAT WE pass along our hang-ups to our kids. Even before I read the research about how children learn anxiety from their parents, I knew that some of my fears and foibles could be traced to my own mom and dad. That’s okay. We all have our quirks and weak spots; it’s what makes us human. The key is to understand yourself and your specific challenges and learn to manage them. To make the most of this book—to harness the lessons of neuroscience and behavioral science and follow in the successful path of Vicki Hoefle, Ross Greene, and the parents using PEP and PAX techniques—you must first deal with yourself.
The Good News About Bad Behavior Page 22